Pages

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Add your name to the record of people protesting CareerBuilder ad

On February 5, CareerBuilder plans to air another one of its annual Super Bowl ads that exploit and ridicule chimpanzees. They are hurting chimpanzees, both captive and wild, with their irresponsible use of chimps in their marketing campaigns over the years. There is a petition, supported by hundreds of people around the world, calling on CareerBuilder to stop using live chimpanzees in their ads. I hope you will go to the petition at change.org and sign it. And please share it, quickly, so we can present more than a thousand signatures to CareerBuilder before their ad runs.

The Super Bowl ads are a sad testament to corporate insentience about our sentient cousins. "No chimps were beaten during the filming of this ad," proclaims their company public relations person. No, of course not. That happens before ads are taped, and after the lights are turned off.

While CareerBuilder scorns the expert opinions of primatologists and the concerns of animal advocates everywhere, responsible companies are listening. Pfizer created an innovative ad campaign for Robitussin, using a computer generated image of an orangutan. Which company - Pfizer or CareerBuilder - is smart and forward looking, and which one is mired in the yuck-yucks of the 1950s and '60s when people thought it was funny to make apes do stupid tricks?

CareerBuilder marketers think this
image from their ad is funny.

As Alicia Koberstein told CareerBuilder, in her posting on the petition site, “your current ads are sophomoric and reflect a dark ages mentality.” Alicia is right. Although I hate to give them more play, you really have to see this ad to believe the level of ridicule and contempt they have for chimpanzees. See the Good Morning America report, Activists Protesting CareerBuilder Ads, that shows some clips from the ad.

By using live chimpanzees for advertising, CareerBuilder supports an industry that hurts the chimps from the beginning of their lives when they are forcibly taken away from their mothers, through their youthful isolation and often abusive training, to their final 40 or 50 years when they are discarded into sanctuaries without financial support. In fact, the young chimpanzees used in CareerBuilder's first commercial (yes, they've been doing this for years) are now at the Center for Great Apes, a sanctuary in Florida - with no support from CareerBuilder.

In refusing to stop their use of chimpanzees, CareerBuilder is inflicting tremendous harm on the captive chimpanzees they've used in the past and the chimps they are using now. And they are deliberately and knowingly interfering with the conservation education that must take place if we are to save the remaining chimpanzees in the wild.

6 comments:

Excellent points. In addition to raising ethical consequences, the use of live chimpanzees in entertainment is detrimental to conservation efforts to save this endangered species. Our recent article on this topic discusses this issue and provides ways for you to make a difference and help protect chimps!

Just stopped by to check and see if you had the guts to publish my post. I see you didn't.

I am just as much against animal cruelty as you are, but pitching a fit over using a chimp in a commercial is the silliest thing I've heard in a while. Do you really think that CareerBuilder.com was wounded by the "turn the channel for 30 sec." petition? No. Did it make you look foolish? Yes.

I don't recall seeing a prior comment from you. In any case, people with guts don't hide behind anonymity.

Have you read my reasons for opposing the use of chimps in advertising? I think not, or you would have learned that chimps in entertainment ARE abused.

BTW, the fact that you are crediting me for the "turn the channel" effort seems to indicate that you are confused. That was not my effort, and I fail to see how someone else's campaign makes me look foolish.

But, hey, I look forward to your future comments. And I'll understand why you would want to continue to hide your identity.

Retired federal research chimps are still in labs. Whose fault is it?

Search This Blog

Translate

Dad and me

(I thought parents were supposed to save kids from pictures like this!)

Dad was a chimp trainer at the Detroit Zoo from 1948 to 1964, when the "Chimp Show" was a popular attraction. We know about the harm done by those shows -- and by those trainers... This blog picks up from Intimate Ape's "A Daughter's Dark Tale of Abuse," about lessons learned, and lessons still being taught.

Some good sites...

AZA zoos oppose using apes in entertainment

Modern accredited zoos have changed a lot in the decades since my dad was a chimp trainer. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums now affirms that ape attractiveness in entertainment "masks the often cruel and dangerous practices commonly required to make apes compliant in such appearances." See the AZA White Paper: Apes in Media and Commercial Performances.